Rep Thomas Massie indicates he’s now ‘America only’ rather than ‘America First’

Rep. Thomas Massie — a Republican budget hawk facing a primary challenger backed by President Donald Trump in Kentucky — has previously described himself as “America First,” but now says he thinks he is “America Only.”

“I’m tired of sending money overseas,” he told Fox News Digital in an interview Thursday.

“I’m tired of favoring foreign beef over American-grown beef,” he continued. “I’m ready to be uniquely American. And I think all members of Congress should be that way.”

Massie gave Trump a mixed review, saying the president is America first on “some” fronts.

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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., before a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 3, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“But when it comes to beef, he doesn’t put America first. When it comes to sending money overseas, to Ukraine and Israel,” Massie said, “I think he needs to go back to his campaign promises and put America first. Because we’re not going to make America great again by sending our money overseas.”

Massie noted that his “biggest disagreement” with the Trump administration and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is increased spending.

“I mean, I thought we were conservative. Why are we spending more this year than Joe Biden spent last year? In fact, we’re spending about $200 billion more,” he said, adding that the consequence “is inflation and higher interest rates.”

“And people feel it. You can’t turn them on,” Massie added. “You can’t tell them things are getting cheaper when they’re not.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, White House spokesperson Kush Desai accused Massie of “false math.”

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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks his button on the national debt before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in the House of Representatives Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Here are the facts: President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut Act reduced mandatory spending by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and the budget deficit from April to September of this year is down 40% from last year, when Joe Biden was president,” Desai said in the statement.

“Instead of miscalculating, Thomas Massie should think about how he betrayed his constituents and American workers when he voted with all Democrats against the largest tax cut for working families in American history, including no tip tax, no Social Security tax, no overtime tax, expanded child tax credits, and making the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent,” he added.

Massie said his other disagreements about what’s happening in Washington are “secondary” to the spending issue.

“I would say we need to follow through on some of our election promises. For example, releasing the Epstein files,” he said.

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Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, have spearheaded an effort to force a vote in the House on a proposal that would force the disclosure of documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein.

Their discharge petition gathered 217 of the 218 signatures needed to force the vote, but Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, who announced she would sign, still has not been sworn in more than six weeks after winning a special election in Arizona.

Johnson “tried every way to avoid this vote,” Massie claimed, saying the speaker did not swear in the Democrat because she “represents the 218th signature that I need to force a vote on the release of the Epstein files.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to Johnson’s office for comment.

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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 3, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Massie, who owns cattle himself, said the president had “kind of punched the cattle ranchers and … ranchers in the gut” in the United States.

In a speech aboard Air Force One last month, Trump indicated that the United States was considering buying Argentine beef to lower prices.

Days later, Reuters reported that a White House official said the administration was quadrupling imports of low-tariff beef from the South American country. Increasing the tariff quota to 80,000 tonnes will allow Argentina to send larger quantities of product to America at a lower duty rate, according to the media outlet.

The president has Massie in his political crosshairs — he repeatedly insulted the congressman on Truth Social.

In an article published Monday, Trump called Massie a “weak and pathetic RINO” — a derogatory acronym that means “Republican in Name Only.” He also called the congressman a “totally ineffective LOSER,” while expressing support for primary challenger Ed Gallrein, who Trump is supporting in the race.

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President Donald Trump awaits the arrival of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House October 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Even as the president tries to convince voters in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District to reject Massie, the lawmaker said he doesn’t regret supporting Trump ahead of the 2024 election, noting that former Vice President Kamala Harris would have been a total “disaster.”

Massie initially supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary, but DeSantis dropped out and supported Trump, and Massie later also supported the Republican heavyweight.

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“And I’m happy that President Trump won,” he said.

Trump has “done a lot of good things,” he said, adding that many of them were implemented by executive order, and he thinks Congress should vote on more issues so the president’s measures aren’t just “temporary actions.”

When asked if he would be interested in running for president himself, Massie said he was not interested.